The crumbling stadium that’s prompted the Athletics’ move to Las Vegas was just as cavernous, threadbare, outdated and unfashionable as advertised. Naturally, I loved itOakland-Alameda County Coliseum, the fifth-oldest stadium in Major League Baseball where the A’s have called home since 1968, has been called baseball’s last dive bar. A brutalist concrete doughnut short on grandeur and long on character, seated next to a Bart station at the center of an industrial waste land, no one could ever mistake it for the sport’s revered old cathedrals like Boston’s Fenway Park, Chicago’s Wrigley Field or Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.When I paid the princely sum of $2 for a ticket to a recent Wednesday afternoon game against the Cubs, the stadium...
The center’s season should go down as a validation of The Process, a breakthrough made sweeter by the Sixers remaining undefeated through the first two rounds of the NBA playoffsFor a good chunk of the 2010s it was an open question in the NBA as to whether Joel Embiid, who was crowned the league’s Most Valuable Player this week, was even worth the bother. For a solid three years the Philadelphia 76ers tempted fate while aggressively trying to lose games just to put themselves in position to land the freshman center with the third pick in the 2014 draft, effectively reinventing the practice now known as tanking. And when the Kansas product went on to miss his first two seasons...
Refreshing response to a question from the media was unlike much of the discourse surrounding elite professional sportAlmost certainly fed up while facing the press in the media centre of Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum last Wednesday night, Giannis Antetokounmpo made no attempt to disguise his utter contempt for the query he had just been asked to field. The Bucks basketball legend had fronted up before the ladies and gentlemen of the fourth estate after his team’s elimination by the lowly ranked Miami Heat after a five-game series, arguably one of the most seismic upsets in NBA playoff history. Antetokounmpo’s gaze was caught by Eric Nehm, the man from the Athletic on the Bucks beat, who kept his question fairly short and...
A Lakers team given only a 0.3% chance of making the playoffs a few months ago has the look of a deadly serious contender in a wide-open Western Conference after toppling the Grizzlies“Do you ever amaze – or surprise – yourself?” LeBron James was asked following the Lakers’ thrilling Game 4 overtime win in Los Angeles on Monday, which gave the team a commanding three-games-to-one lead in their first-round playoff series against the Memphis Grizzlies. “Yup,” James replied succinctly. Indeed, recording his first ever 20-point, 20-rebound game on one fully functioning foot, at age 38 (making him the oldest player to ever do so), and in the playoffs no less, was pretty amazing.But seeing James and the rest of his...
An ex-Marine turned analytics wonk is using biomechanical data to help teams find the NFL draft’s diamonds in the roughAs the NFL draft winds down on Saturday and the rookie free agent signing period kicks off, teams are on the clock to find the next Brock Purdy. San Francisco closed last year’s show after taking the 23-year-old quarterback with the 262nd and final pick on the board, a distinction that comes with the unfortunate nickname Mr Irrelevant. But when franchise QBs Jimmy Garoppolo and Trey Lance were both knocked out late last season, it fell to the Iowa State product to keep the 49ers’ playoff fortunes alive. All he did was win his first seven starts and lead San Francisco...